We’ve probably been remiss not to note this new bloggernacle development: Blogger and uber-commenter Clark Goble has started a reading club. He’s working through chapters of McMurrin and Ostler at the moment. He’s given these works a nicely detailed discussion so far. Clark’s first installment, covering pages from McMurrin, is available here. His second installment, covering the beginning of Ostler, is here. And Dave, over at the Mormon Inquiry blog, has posted his own responses to Clark’s McMurrin post here. Readers who are interested in philosophy or theology of Mormonism are likely to be interested in Clark’s and Dave’s discussions.
I’m not sure those would be of that much interest to most people. Although I’d definitely recommend Ostler’s book to anyone interested in learning LDS theology. (Even if I disagree with him in many places) It’s a great introduction and is very well written. I’d avoid McMurrin. It’s not as bad as I make out on my site, but I don’t think it is helpful for understanding LDS theology and I definitely don’t think it is a good introduction.
On the other hand the post I thought people *would* quote was about translation. It was a post about Umberto Eco on translation that I thought was very relevant to how we read the Book of Mormon and especially “quotations” in it. It’s not very philosophical and (I think) something many overlook. FARMS has made the point a few times, but Eco provides pretty good examples that I think Mormon critics tend to assume never happens.
I’ve always thought that Clark is among the most widely read and thoughtful LDS we have. To bad (for us, perhaps not for him) that he went into computers instead of the academy. I would love to have him as a colleague.
Clark: it would be great fun to have a student do a comparison and contrast of Eco and Benjamin on translation. They take such very different views, but each has a great deal to teach us about how difficult it is to decide what a translation really is. I’ve been discovering this anew as I read through a translation of a piece I’ve written. It is tempting to go back and rewrite the English based on the French translation.
Note “widely read” means he has read a lot, not that a lot of people read his blog. Perhaps they do, but given Clark’s devotion to philosophy, I am skeptical. Many should read it, but I doubt that they do.
I get more viewers than I expect. A lot come via google. Although to be honest half of what I write I write just for myself.
I average about 15 – 20 regular (repeat) readers a day and about the same number of “new” people who typically come via Google.
Far, far short of what comes here, of course.
Anyone who can get 15-20 readers a day on a philosophical topic should feel like he’s made the NY Times best seller list.
Actually some of the better philosophy blogs on my sidebar get at least 10 times that. Of course most of those are probably grad students. But there are some great philosophy blogs out there. (Unfortunately none on hermeneutics or postmodernism that I’ve found yet)
I agree. I’ve not yet found anything on hermeneutics that is particularly interesting, and most stuff on postmodernism is just dumb. There are, however, a number of grad student papers on hermeneutics that are reasonably interesting. The problem is that they haven’t yet been criticized and rewritten.
I’m no philosophy blog expert, but I generally read Leiter and Solum, both of whom discuss philosophy quite a bit on their blogs. (Leiter, famously, runs a popular system of rankings for graduate philosphy programs). Most of Leiter’s blog discussions of philosophy are Nietzsche-oriented; Solum tends to discuss jurisprudence and Rawls a lot. (Nate can probably do more justice to their philosophical positiont than that general note.)
Leiter’s at http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/ and Solum at http://lsolum.blogspot.com/ .
I recently noticed a new group blog on epistimology, which was highly recommended by Leiter, but I haven’t followed it much, I’ve just looked at a few posts. It’s at http://www.missouri.edu/~kvanvigj/certain_doubts/ .
I also like Crooked Timber a lot, but most everyone knows about that one by now. John Holbo has a blog that I periodically read, but it’s more politics and society than philosophy.
And some law blogs get into philosophy sometimes. The crim-law group blog Punishment Theory does; so does the Catholic-law blog Mirror of Justice.
Finally, I would be remiss not to mention the hands-down, most cutting-edge, envied, erudite, awesome philosophical blog in the universe. It’s over at http://www.tutissima.com . A few of the contributors can be a little flaky sometimes, but in general, I can’t recommend it enough. :)
Uh, Kaimi, don’t you have a day job?
I thought you had to be an at-home mom to spend that much time on the net.
Cravath clients understand that they will be billed for time spent blissing out on blogs. It’s a reduced hourly rate of course.
Solum was a friend of Rawls, and some of his work shows up in _Political Liberalism_.